Your Right to Know

After traveling 2,000 miles and helping find a pair of missing children, two Ohio state
representatives came back to the office yesterday.

Reps. Marlene Anielski and Cheryl Grossman spent the past week participating in the seventh
season of
Fireball Run — an online reality series that now has helped locate nearly 40 missing
children since 2007 — and helping victims of the flooding that swept through Colorado.

“It’s been an incredible experience and I’m just so proud to be involved in helping find these
missing children,” Anielski, R-Walton Hills, said from the 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am they
drove all week.

The car, similar to the one used in
Smokey and the Bandit, went along with this year’s “All Stars & Movie Cars” theme and
was detailed with information to help raise awareness about Brett Wurm of Tiffin, who disappeared
in 2005 when he was 8 years old. Anielski and Grossman distributed 4,500 trading cards with Wurm’s
information and helped raise suicide-prevention awareness throughout the eight cities they
visited.

After arriving in Colorado on Sept. 18, Anielski and Grossman spent time before the competition
providing food to flooding victims with the Meals on Wheels Association of America.

“Team Ohio” finished 30th among 40 teams that participated in the eight-day trip from Longmont,
Colo., to Riverside, Calif.

“Our goal was to not finish last,” said Grossman, R-Grove City. “We were proud to be able to
make the trip and appreciate and respected seeing all the people willing to come together for
important goals at every single stop.”

While traveling, teams solved clues and accomplished tasks as part of competitions that ranged
from dressing in firefighter uniforms and using fire hoses to knock over obstacles, to collecting
shoes, books and clothes for children’s centers.

“We live such busy lives, it’s easy to forget how important it is to take time out of our busy
routines and see the outreach and camaraderie in America that make it such a wonderful country,”
Grossman said.

Alex Felser is a fellow in Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Statehouse News
Bureau.